Media Art in Worship: The Potential for a New Liturgical Art, Its Pastoral and Theological Challenges

(Excerpt) Greetings to you all, my colleagues in liturgy, my sisters and brothers in Christ! The black-and-white photography we encountered as part of our liturgy in the Chapel of the Resurrection yesterday and today represent art, meditation art that can stir our imaginations and refresh our souls. Professor Aimee Tomasek of Valparaiso University asked her students to create these for us based on their reading of yesterday\u27s gospel and hymn of the day. Students\u27 work is always refreshing. So, too, are all the water metaphors in which we have been steeped in our liturgies here during this institute

Media Art in Worship: The Potential for a New Liturgical Art, Its Pastoral and Theological Challenges

(excerpt) I am especially pleased to be among you, because I have had the gift of reflecting on worship in the ELCA in the past, thanks to the late Paul Nelson of blessed memory and Scott Weidler of your Worship Office. They asked me to create a video series to accompany The Use of the Means of Grace. Perhaps some of you know that series. It’s entitled These Things Matter: Word, Baptism and Communion. A second video series I help develop was a Lenten series of reflections on worship entitled God is Here

Y2K, The Apocalypse, and Evangelical Christianity: The Role of Eschatological Belief in Church Responses

Apocalyptic beliefs in Christianity have endured for two thousand years and on occasion have motivated and justified radical and even revolutionary collective action (Boyer 1992). Why apocalyptic visions are part of some Christians\u27 belief system is grounded in their beliefs about the end times, or eschatologies, that shape church cultures and subsequent behaviors. This paper considers cultural aspects of collective action, applying the concept of frames that give events meaning and inspire and legitimize collective behavior to Christian church responses to Y2K as a recent example of an anticipated apocalyptic event. Five interpretive frames linking eschatological ideation with specific collective behaviors are identified and discussed, as well as three corresponding strategic responses to Y2K that were taken by various kinds of Protestant Christian churches as they prepared for the ushering in of a new millennium

Faces and phases of Protestantism in African contexts : the Jacobus Capitein heritage

Peer reviewedThis essay explores the shape, form, tone, and outlook of Protestantism on the African continent. I present the argument that, by and large, ‘African Protestantism’ is of a different order for its Euro-American counterparts. In order to illustrate and pursue this line of argument, the case study of Jacobus Capitein, a 17th century African slave who was to later become the first Protestant minister trained in theology is advanced. Capitein, together with his work as a pastor at the slave castle called Elmina near the Ghanaian city of Cape Coast in Ghana, is held up as a mirror of African Protestantism. The essay concludes with a discussion about the prospects of Protestant Christianity in Africa.Church History Society of Southern Afric

Surface prospection of burial grounds and new research tools (on the example of the study of changes in cemetery boundaries)

Basing on own experiences in studying cemetery space, the possibilities of using LiDAR visualization in acquiring information on changes in the boundaries of Christian and Jewish necropolises were demonstrated on selected examples. The application of the methods indicated in the article comprises the significant supplementation of terrain inspection, considerably expand-ing knowledge about a given site. The use of digital elevation models has been popular since their introduction, especially in the archaeological community, as it allows for feature recognition without conducting invasive prospection, including excava-tion. As it has turned out, in the course of the research conducted by the author, the use of LiDAR tools should be an integral part of the geographical analysis. This highlights the need to promote interdisciplinary in the research on cultural heritage sites

Opus Dei and its arrival in Australia and New Zealand : a thesis presented in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Philosophy in Religious Studies at Massey University

Opus Dei, the Catholic Church's first personal prelature, has attracted a great deal of passion and argument in its 60 or 70 years of existence. Very little has been written about Opus Dei in this part of the world, and as far as I am aware, no previous academic research has been done. The purpose of this thesis is to give the reader a brief overview of Opus Dei and its beginnings in this part of the world. I have begun by looking at the development of the pioneer Georgian and Victorian world where Australasian Catholicism has its roots, at the people who made up that world, and their customs and beliefs. The success or failure of the Opus Dei enterprise in this part of the world is obviously very much bound up with the kind of people and religious attitudes they encountered on arrival. A variety of new Catholic groups sprang up during the twentieth century. A number, like Opus Dei, had their origins in traditional European Catholicism, but soon spread further afield. Other groups remained more exclusive. A comparison shows that while Opus Dei's structure and status in canon law is at present a unique one, other groups are similarily organised in many respects Is Opus Dei a sect or cult within the Catholic Church, as some allege? A brief discussion on sects and cults follows, and concludes that though Opus Dei does exhibit a number of the typically identifying signs of such groups, it does not belong in either category. The world scene and the local Church situation of the time are considered in the following chapters as Opus Dei arrives in Oceania and settles into first Australian and then New Zealand life. It will be seen that the prelature is often at odds with what is happening in both the national Catholic churches and the wider community. My conclusion finds that there is much good in Opus Dei for the Church to affirm, but members' energies are probably too narrowly focused. A meeting of minds within the wider Church would be beneficial to all. Appendices enlarge on information given in the text, and list further sources of information for those who would like to investigate further

Missional Churches in Secular Societies: Theology Consults Sociology

The church is missionary by nature. But what about public church mission in secular societies? Furious religion mobilizing against rebarbative secularity? Withdrawal to seek exemplary perfection? To the contrary, theologically principled consultation with the sociology of J. Casanova on deprivatized religion leads to public witness in modern societies. Public theology can interpret deprivatized religion as an expression of prophetic and kingly elements in church mission. However, sociology leaves the priestly element as if private. What might ecclesiology, missiology, and public theology say about a public aspect of the priestly element in the church’s witness in modern societies

Practising the Space Between: Embodying Belief as an Evangelical Anglican Student

This article explores the formation of British evangelical university students as believers. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted with a conservative evangelical Anglican congregation in London, I describe how students in this church come to embody a highly cognitive, word-based mode of belief through particular material practices. As they learn to identify themselves as believers, practices of reflexivity and accountability enable them to develop a sense of narrative coherence in their lives that allows them to negotiate tensions that arise from their participation in church and broader social structures. I demonstrate that propositional belief – in contexts where it becomes an identity marker – is bound up with relational practices of belief, such that distinctions between “belief in” and “belief that” are necessarily blurred in the lives of young evangelicals